Posts Tagged 'Purgatory'

Around the office I am commonly considered a "low-level" software engineer. If you are in the business of computer programming you know this means I generally have various pieces of computer hardware strewn about my work area, and an ASCII chart hanging on my wall complete with a cheat-table so I can quickly convert numbers between binary, decimal, and hex. If you are not in the business of developing software, think of me as guy who couldn’t decide if I wanted to be an electrical engineer or a computer programmer and thus through my own indecision eventually found myself stuck somewhere in between. I know a bit about both but am not an expert in either. (I think the Roman word for this sort of limbo is purgatory, but I find it pretty cozy most days.)

At any rate when a project comes along that walks the fence between the realms of hardware and software my name naturally comes up. Such was the case a few weeks ago when one of our systems administrators had the need to retrieve the serial number from the RAM chips already installed in a number of servers. He asked me if it could be done. I looked and saw the information was reported in the BIOS of one of my machines, so I promptly responded with a “you bet”. After all, if the BIOS can display the information on the screen I should be able to as well. Right? I told him it would take a week.

The problem in this career field I have worked for some ten years now is you don’t know what you don’t know. Fast forward two weeks. Now think the Friday before Easter. That’s right, the one I am supposed to be off lounging around the house in my pajamas. It took a little longer to pull that serial number than I expected. If you’re interested the slow down turned out to be that the information existed at a physical memory address that was not easily accessible from Microsoft Windows (luckily for the BIOS it gets to display the data before an operating system is loaded).

Remember the old Chevy Chase movie "Funny Farm"? Chevy’s character is driving around lost when he passes the old man sitting on his porch in a rocking chair. Chevy stops his vehicle, rolls down his window, and says: “Excuse me Sir. Can you tell me how you would get to Redbud?” The old man leans forward, spits, and replies: “If I were going to Redbud I sure as hell wouldn’t start from here.”

Like Mr. Chase’s character in the movie, I didn’t get to pick where I started the journey from. We need the data available to us after the operating system boots. So I am hacking my way through it. I’m nearly there now. Close enough at least that I felt comfortable taking a break from the code and blowing off some steam by writing this blog. And the truth is, while I might have been whining just a bit I actually have enjoyed this project immensely. I appreciate the fact that the management here at SoftLayer gives us the opportunity to challenge ourselves and then grow to meet those challenges. We are encouraged to “get our hands dirty”. When I finish up here I will have a deeper understanding of how the BIOS relates to the operating system (and through the BIOS indirectly to the hardware).

As for our customers, well, it just so happens once I got to digging around in the binary mud there was a whole lot of other useful insight buried in the swirls of all those zeros and ones. Instead of extracting just the serial numbers I am pulling about a dozen pages of hardware data points we can use in statistical analysis for predicting failures, standards compliance, and availability trends. Like I said, you don’t know what you don’t know. But sometimes you are pleasantly surprised once you find out. By promoting such an amiable work environment, fostering creativity, and encouraging innovation, SoftLayer continues to boldly go where no other hosting company has gone before.

Alright, time to climb down from the pulpit and finish up my software.